The present invention relates to an auto-doffer for looms in a weaving mill, and more particularly relates to full automatization of doffing operation of cloths on a loom in a weaving mill wherein a large number of looms are collectively arranged for production of woven cloths.
In doffing operation on a loom, a cloth connected to a full roll on the loom is cut in the width direction for disconnection from a cloth being woven and the full roll is doffed off the loom onto a carriage. Next, an empty roll carried to the loom by a carriage is transferred to the loom and the leading end of the cloth being woven is wound around the empty roll so transferred.
Such a series of operation steps are conventionally carried out by means of manual labour by mill operators. With recent increase in width of a loom, the weight of a cloth roll is increased significantly and, as a result, it is currently almost infeasible to carry out the doffing operation by manual labour. In addition, the loom needs to be kept inoperative for a considerably long period for such manual doffing operation. With recent, general tendency of high speed running of looms, production loss caused by such long stoppage of the loom becomes quite significant. Because of such a recent trend in production, there has appeared a strong demand for automatic doffing operation.
Several attempts have been made to automate the doffing operation to satisfy such a demand. For example, Japanese Patent Opening Sho. 60-171956 proposes an automatic doffing system. Most conventional proposals, however, are involved in partial automation of the entire doffing operation only. Some of the conventional attempts propose fully automatic doffing systems but, as far as generally known by ones skilled in the art, they are rather theoretical than practical. In other words, no fully automatized doffing systems have been used in practice.